one world, this world in its briefness and sorrow is still enough for me

~|~

It was a good idea to go dancing tonight. I wasn’t planning to and was feeling tired, having been busy all day; but dance has a way of revivifying the soul in its flows and rhythms and community. To dance is to feel a little more alive. I wonder how I lived without it.

Lately I’ve been revisiting the Liturgy of the Hours (the daily round of Christian prayer associated with various times of day), and creating a little Book of Hours for myself. The Hours have always served me well: they structure my day, keep me in touch with Latin, provide a ready source of chant texts, and make me a better writer by giving me access to well-written devotional verse. Now, of course, I’m hoping to use them to explore Sarum Use hymn settings. I’m basing my practice around the 1979 Book of Common Prayer of the U.S. Episcopal Church, relying on it for Matins, Evensong and Compline and supplementing that with adaptations of pre-Tridentine Prime, Terce, Sext, and None. I doubt I’ll stick with the Hours for long, and they haven’t been a regular part of my life in years; but so long as I do I expect it will be a salutary experience.

I am of course as Christian as the men of the Renaissance were pagans, which is to say, not at all; and my own spirituality is in fact far closer to paganism than theirs was, relying as it does upon the cycles of the earth. But just as Renaissance writers and artists referenced the Greek and Roman gods — studying their histories, fashioning images of them, and uncovering their monuments without ever worshipping them — so too can I draw on the rich cultural heritage of medieval Christianity for my own edification, without necessarily having to worship its God. One does not have to believe to be comforted by order, language and music. And that, to me, is grace.